Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!

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By MARK JONES
Project Syndicate
30 August 2024

In the face of renewed threats to democracy, historical knowledge of past dictatorships becomes as crucial as ever. After all, the Holocaust and World War II show what can happen when democracies allow themselves to be undermined from within.

DUBLIN – In the spring of 1933, following Adolf Hitler’s appointment as German chancellor, Thomas Mann was on holiday in Switzerland with his wife. While there, the Nobel laureate author received a warning from Germany that it would be unsafe for him to return. Now that the Nazis were in power, they wanted to send Mann to a concentration camp for having publicly opposed them.

Mann thus became one of the first German refugees from Hitler’s regime. Until 1938, he spent most of his time in Switzerland. But as Hitler’s power increased and war in Europe looked increasingly likely, he moved to the United States, where he did not stay silent. Even at the height of Hitler’s conquests in Europe, Mann remained doggedly optimistic, promising Americans that “democracy will win” in the end.

Will it, though? Many nowadays are not so sure. As authors like Ruth Ben-Ghiat of New York University remind us, we live in a new age of the “strongman,” with democracy retreating in many parts of the world. Hate-inspired violence is becoming more common on both sides of the Atlantic, and once unthinkable, things have become normalized. This November, in the country where Mann once promised that democracy would prevail, tens of millions of Americans will vote for a candidate who responded to losing the 2020 election by instigating a fascist-style assault on the US Capitol.

The Past As Prologue

Given the need to defend democracy, historical knowledge has become more critical. Fortunately, in the lead-up to this year’s US election, historians Richard J. Evans and Timothy W. Ryback have each published books that mine the past to offer guidelines for navigating our increasingly concerning present.

Evans, an emeritus professor at the University of Cambridge, is the more distinguished of the two authors. A prolific historian, he first came to public prominence in the early 2000s for his role as an expert witness in a libel case brought by the notorious Holocaust denier David Irving against Penguin Books and the historian Deborah Lipstadt. Evans played a vital role in the trial, clashing with Irving in courtroom scenes later dramatized in the 2016 film Denial.

Until then, Evans’s significant works had focused mainly on nineteenth-century Germany. Still, following the case, he moved forward in time to write a critically acclaimed three-volume social and political history of Nazi Germany, published between 2003 and 2008. Alongside Ian Kershaw’s two-volume biography of Hitler, which focuses on the life of the dictator, Evans’s trilogy remains among the most important general works on Nazi Germany.

By contrast, Ryback, an American historian who serves as director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague, has never written a general history of Nazism. He is best known for his 2008 best-seller, Hitler’s Private Library, a cleverly conceived study in which the dictator responsible for the “industrial production of corpses” (to borrow Hannah Arendt’s phrase) is also revealed to have been a book lover and an avid reader. Then came Ryback’s 2014 book, Hitler’s First Victims, which offered a forensic account of the SS’s first excesses of violence in the concentration camp at Dachau (where the Nazis wanted to send Mann) in 1933.

Fateful Decisions

Evans and Ryback both see German history as a powerful lens through which to view the problems currently facing liberal democracy. Thus, Evans sees the fall of the Weimar Republic as “the paradigm of democracy’s collapse and dictatorship’s triumph,” and Ryback begins his book Takeover in early August 1932, just days after the Nazis reached their electoral high point.

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Following a summer of violent street fighting between Nazi Brownshirts and Communists, Hitler’s party won 37% of the vote and 230 seats in the Reichstag in the election on July 31, 1932. The magnitude of the Nazis’ triumph led Hitler to assume that he was entitled to the position of chancellor. But German President Paul von Hindenburg, whose office was supposed to be guardian of the constitution, disagreed.

At a meeting on August 13, 1932, Hindenburg snubbed Hitler and used emergency powers available to him under the Weimar constitution to support the chancellorship of arch-conservative Franz von Papen, the leader of the cabinet that Hindenburg had appointed on June 1, 1932. Papen’s government depended entirely on Hindenburg’s support and lacked an electoral mandate. It was so stacked with aristocratic conservatives that it was known as the “Cabinet of Barons.”

In the late summer of 1932, shocking scenes played out in the briefly reconvened German parliament. Reichstag President Hermann Göring, who had received the position in August thanks to the votes of his fellow Nazi Party members, abused the position to humiliate Papen by ignoring him in the Chamber before the Nazis and Communists joined forces to vote through a no-confidence motion in Papen’s government.

…

In March 1933, just minutes before the passage of the Nazi’s Enabling Act (the legal starting point of the dictatorship), the Social Democratic politician Otto Wels addressed the Reichstag and bravely defended “humanity” and democracy as “eternal” values that would outlive Nazism. As he spoke, he had a suicide pill in his pocket, fearing that he might be arrested and handed over to Nazi torturers immediately afterward.

Continue Reading …

PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: NEOCONS AND WORLD DOMINANCE

Watch Video Here (35 minutes, 37 seconds)

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
10 September 2024

Click Here for Transcript

@marjoriejohnson3147
Stop the Genocide Antony Blinken~

@mc-lb9dk
Court Jew Blinken is scared for the aftermath. He will be prosecuted for genocide. At least in an ordinary world

@chrism415
Who would sacrifice the youth of their nation for a bunch of rabid psychopaths?

@zakariyeyahye5566
“When Exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, criminals are ruling you.” — Edward Snowden.

@zakariyeyahye5566
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” — John F. Kennedy.

@goraiebfred
What Israel is doing is heading towards its demise.

@alfredocalzadilla7251
Victoria Nuland has so much blood on her hands. It is just incredible.

@lavendereucalyptus3225
I love Prof Sachs’ sanity and passion for correcting the wrongs by speaking up tirelessly.

@user-fq1xh7bg7gJoe_Frisina
Always an excellent analysis by Prof. Sachs. It's a shame that 200 million Americans will never hear this exposition. Keep up the good fight, Professor!

@marjoriejohnson3147
One dag geleden
Thank you, Judge~Thank you, Prof Jeffrey Sachs!!!!!!!

@bhj1124
If it were up to the US and the UK alone, we would still have apartheid South Africa.

@jeanspiota
It is not possible to have a two-state solution in Palestine as the 800000 armed violent Israeli settlers on the West Bank will not allow it.

What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive? Edited by Abraham A. van Kempen.

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EDITORIAL … The Pendulum Swings and Planet Earth Continues to Spin (Part 3)

By Abraham A. van Kempen
12 September 2024

A Dead Heat Neck and Neck Race Too Close to Call

To paraphrase the NY Times of 12 September 2024, “If former President Donald J. Trump is gambling that Americans are as angry as he is, while Vice President Kamala Harris hopes voters are exhausted by the Trump era and are ready to move on,” clearly the former president won the debate. Indeed, the vice president kicked him in what hurt him the most: his pride. So what? Everyone needs an ego blowout from time to time. One is never humbled enough.

Ultimately, it’s not who won the debate but who wins the White House. It’s a dead heat, neck-and-neck race. Forty-eight percent of American voters want Harris, and another 48 percent want Trump. The remaining four percent are still undecided. If they’re undecided now, they’ll be undecided up to the moment of truth when they cast the ballot, if they’re going to vote at all. I know with incontrovertible certainty that Americans are unhappy with how things are. Moreover, people worldwide are appalled with America (but not Americans).

Can America be a light among nations? Not when its government frontrunners surrender US leadership to global interests and speak from two sides of their mouths!

Isn’t it time for Washington, D.C., to become more local and less global? Instead of arming Israel to the teeth, encourage the good Israelis to become better neighbors. The same is true with the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians resent having to serve as cannon fodder for EU-US/NATO interests. What a missed opportunity for Ukraine. Ukraine could have rooted itself as the conduit – the kingpins – between East and West and making money. Instead, Ukraine now suffers from a brain drain. Many young families fled Ukraine and are swarming throughout Europe, some aimlessly. Reportedly, its armed forces are left with 600,000 dead, with more wounded, and God knows how many are incarcerated as prisoners of war. More Ukrainians emigrated to Eastern Europe than to Western Europe. They don’t want to attack and invade Russia. But Ukraine’s present interests are global, not local.

Leave China and Taiwan alone. Let them resolve their differences. I’ve been to Taiwan often. Taiwan will be part of the greater China someday, but only when they’re ready. They will eagerly become one with China when the Chinese become one with the Taiwanese. In China, a saying is: “Blood is thicker than water.”

But it’s not about being good neighbors. Israel and Ukraine serve the EU-US/ Western Alliance interests to preserve Western hegemony in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. Kill, steal, and destroy! Scare the neighboring countries into submission. “The suffering in Gaza could also happen in your backyard … comply with Western Policy.” The EU-US/Western Alliance has long forgotten the story of the Good Palestinian, a Samaritan witnessed in the Sacred Texts. The world longs for an honest-to-goodness balance of power, a win-win for all humanity. A brother’s keeper is not a brother’s master. One washes feet. The other tramples with feet.

America should take care of its own. There’s a lot of catching up to do. I haven’t met one American who only wants pie in the sky.

HAARETZ EDITORIAL | WHY IS ISRAEL AFRAID TO ALLOW FOREIGN JOURNALISTS IN GAZA? WHAT'S IT HIDING?

By blocking journalists from Gaza, Israel not only prevents coverage of the war's horrors but also hinders real-time scrutiny of Hamas' claims – a fundamental Israeli interest

People and a journalist rush toward the scene of an explosion following an Israeli strike that reportedly targeted a school in the Zeitoun district on the outskirts of Gaza City last week. Credit: AFP

Haaretz Editorial
11 September 2024

Eleven months into the war, it's possible to say that the circumstances Israel used to justify barring the media from Gaza are no longer valid and that it must allow the entry of foreign journalists so they can cover the war adequately.

As a result of Israel's control of the border crossings, which has become even tighter since the capture of Rafah, no foreign journalist can set foot in the Strip without the state's approval. The blanket ban on entry to foreign journalists without an IDF Spokesperson's Unit escort significantly damages the ability to report independently as well as the right of the public in Israel and around the world to know what is happening in Gaza. 

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The role of a journalist is to be on the ground, to speak directly to people and not just through spokespeople on behalf of vested interests, to feel the atmosphere, and to report on events. There is no comparison between unmediated reporting in the field and reporting via a third party, telephone interviews, and analysis conducted with still or video images.

When Israel prevents journalists from going into Gaza, it prevents them not only from reporting on the horrors of the warfare but also from examining the claims of Hamas in real time – something that is a clear Israeli interest. When Israel prevents foreign journalists from covering what is happening in Gaza, we must ask: What does the state have to hide? How does it benefit from journalists not entering Gaza?

The result of keeping foreign journalists from doing their jobs is that the hard work of reporting rests on the shoulders of Palestinian journalists, who are themselves suffering from the war and its harsh conditions.

According to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 111 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed during the war (three of them, according to the Israeli military, activists in Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad) – which makes the need for other journalists to enter Gaza even more urgent.

In any case, precisely during wartime, it is essential to permit the entry of journalists who are not a party to the conflict: people who can cover the event without fear of pressure from their society or government. In wartime today, when any image risks being accused of being generated using artificial intelligence, the journalist's role in the field is more important than ever.

There is no truth to the military's claim that allowing in journalists who are embedded with Israeli forces is an appropriate alternative to independent access. Nothing can replace independent entry, in which journalists can speak freely with residents and travel to areas of interest to the public and the media. We cannot accept a situation in which the military dictates the nature of journalistic coverage. Israel must allow journalists into the Gaza Strip so that everyone can better understand what is happening there and so that the fog of war can be cleared, if only slightly.

The above article is Haaretz's lead editorial, published in Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.

THE HOLES IN HARRIS'S DEBATE VICTORY

The vice president remains committed to Biden's failing foreign policy.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debate for the first time on Tuesday in Philadelphia. / Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

“So, she gets an A+ from me for her brilliant
chumming of an unprepared Donald Trump—
has age caught up with him?—
and an F for playing politics and refusing to deal
with the reality of America’s most pressing foreign policy issues.”

By Seymour Hersh
Substack.com
11 September 2024

I thought the critical unspoken word for last night’s presidential debate was chumming, defined as a fishing technique of throwing bait—usually fish parts and blood—into the water to attract predatory fish like sharks, tuna, and grouper. Time after time, Vice President Kamala Harris threw out the bait, and Donald Trump bit hard. He was not a shark but a minnow.

Harris proved she could handle America’s most demanding domestic policy job. She deftly separated herself from President Joe Biden, now a figure of yesterday. Trump repeatedly invoked Biden’s name to the point where Harris testily told him, “I am not Joe Biden.” She later reminded Trump that he was not “running against Joe Biden.”

One vital area that scared the hell out of me was foreign policy. Harris did not deviate from Biden’s horrific and dangerous foreign policy in two areas: his continuing personal and military support for the ongoing Israeli terror in Gaza and his administration’s continuing support in dollars and war goods for Ukraine and its delusional president, Volodymyr Zelensky. There is no brief here for Putin, who chose to be provoked by the West’s expansion of NATO to the east, despite American promises made more than three decades ago not to do so, and inflammatory language by Biden’s foreign policy aides, led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Biden had one moment of clarity in his disastrous debate with Trump in June when he spoke of Putin. “The fact is that Putin is a war criminal,” he said. “He’s killed thousands and thousands of people. And he has made one thing clear: he wants to re-establish what was part of the Soviet Empire. . . . He wants all of Ukraine. Do you think he will stop if he takes Ukraine? What do you think happens to Poland? What do you think of Belarus? What do you think happens to those NATO countries?”

Last night, there were strong echoes of Biden’s dark view of Russian intent. “Because of our strong support,” Harris said, referring to the many billions the US has supplied in aid and arms, “Ukraine is an independent and free country. If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now . . . with his eyes on the rest of Europe.” There is little doubt that Harris believes what she said, but politics are always present. “And why don’t you,” she asked Trump, “tell the eight hundred thousand Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch?”

It was a good line, seemingly practiced and delivered with firmness. Harris badly needs those votes. However, Trump’s response clarified that much more significant issues are at stake. Putin has, Trump said, “got a thing that other people don’t have. He’s got nuclear weapons. Nobody ever thinks about that.”

What was not mentioned last night were the many times early on that the Biden administration did all it could to undercut negotiations with diplomats from Russia that might have led to a ceasefire shortly after the war began. In a recent interview, Victoria Nuland, a hardline anti-Russia hawk who served for years as undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Biden administration, acknowledged that she and others in the administration viewed the Russian demands of Ukraine as too onerous. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, was seeking to limit the size of the Ukrainian army and its weaponry, Nuland said, and the White House objected, as Nuland made clear, to the military reductions in Ukraine insisted upon by Putin.

One American official, who has firsthand information on the state of the war today, dismissed the ultimate significance of the much-ballyhooed Ukrainian penetration into Kursk—caustically depicting it as the distance between downtown Washington DC and the Maryland suburb of Gaithersburg: twenty-two miles. It was the first military penetration into Russia since World War II when the German Army lost a crucial tank confrontation in what became one of the most significant battles in warfare. Russian troops are now in the process of reclaiming the settlement and villages seized this summer by Ukraine.

The current Ukraine war has severely diminished both sides. There is recent American intelligence depicting the extent of disarray and low morale along the more than 600-mile Russian front inside eastern and southern Ukraine. The Russian infantry soldiers in foxholes along the front are getting by on what was known in US Marine Corps military prisons as “piss and punk”: bread and rainwater. As the official told me, Russia’s special forces—the Spetsnaz—are said to be “squared away.” Despite their low morale, the Russian frontline forces have continued to advance against a Ukrainian army that is poorly equipped and equally demoralized.

The official added that the crucial question, seemingly minor understood in the White House, is whether the Russian Army inside Ukraine now is “the spearhead of a modern military force with the power, machinery, and morale capable of sweeping through Ukraine and then on to Poland anytime shortly? The answer is no. And more importantly, the Russians know it. They remain an army, however, and can continue to achieve limited success and suffer limited setbacks.

“Do the Ukrainians have sufficient human resources and sustainability to rout the Russian Army? Obviously not. That means stalemate and slow but sure mutual destruction will continue until the West, led by the US, forces the belligerents to negotiate.”

Meanwhile, the official added, Zelensky’s “idea of escalating the war by widening the target base inside Russia will only increase the bloodshed and destruction on both sides without changing the balance.”

The Guardian reported this week that Blinken, who just visited Zelensky in Kyiv along with David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, was preparing to recommend that the Biden administration lift the current restriction barring Ukraine from using long-range American missiles against military targets deep inside Russia.

The Guardian quoted Lammy as saying that a recent dispatch of ballistic missiles from Iran to Russia was a “significant and dangerous escalation” and had changed strategic thinking in London and Washington. (It was not clear how a shipment of missiles from Iran to Russia was an escalation since Russia has had a potent long-range nuclear arsenal for many decades.)

Harris was supportive of Israel during the debate when asked about the Biden administration’s policy in the current war in Gaza that was triggered by the horrific Hamas attack on October 7, in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered and 251—both Israelis, many of them members of the Israel Defense Forces and foreign nationals—were taken, hostage. “I said then, I say now, that Israel has a right to defend itself. . . . And how it does so matters. Because it is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Children. Mothers.” The war must end immediately, she added, “and the way it will end is we need a ceasefire deal, and we need the hostages out. And so we will continue to work around the clock on that. . . . We also must chart a course for a two-state solution.

And in that solution, there must be security for the Israeli people and Israel and in equal measure for the Palestinians.” Speaking sternly, she affirmed that she always would be there for Israel—and in equal measure for the Palestinians—and that she would always give “Israel the ability to defend itself,” as Biden has done, from Iran “and its proxies.” There must be a two-state solution, she said, as if it were possible now, so “we can rebuild Gaza, where the Palestinians have security, self-determination, and the dignity they so rightly deserve.”

Her sentiments were little more than political doubletalk aimed at the young American critics of the administration’s support for Israel’s constant air and ground attacks in Gaza, who may choose again not to vote in the presidential election, as many did in the earlier primaries. There was no mention of the rabid right-wingers who, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their thrall, have shown no intention to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas under any circumstances and have rearmed the Israeli settlers in the West Bank. They are intent on turning Gaza and the West Bank, at the least, with Israeli military support, under permanent Israeli control. The possibility of a viable two-state solution is fading day by day.

If elected, Harris will have to deal realistically with Israel and its enemies, especially Iran and Syria, and find a way to give the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank the hope, dignity, and security they “rightly deserve,” as she said. All of that must begin with more straight talk about where Israel is today and where it is headed under Netanyahu’s leadership.

So she gets an A+ from me for her brilliant chumming of an unprepared Donald Trump—has age caught up with him?—and an F for playing politics and refusing to deal with the reality of America’s most pressing foreign policy issues.

UKRAINE WILL JOIN NATO – BLINKEN

The top US diplomat has repeated Washington’s talking points while visiting Kyiv.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 11, 2024. © Leon Neal / Getty Images

HomeWorld News
11 September 2024

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said Washington wants Kyiv to win the conflict against Moscow and join NATO.

Blinken is visiting Kyiv with his British counterpart, David Lammy, to reiterate Anglo-American support for Vladimir Zelensky’s government.

               “At the July summit, we declared that Ukraine’s path to NATO membership is irreversible,” Blinken said on Wednesday, reminding his hosts that the US-led bloc has “established a command dedicated to supporting Ukraine’s membership.”

Blinken has previously argued for Kyiv’s membership in NATO. However, the bloc has officially declared, both in Washington this summer and last year in Lithuania, that this could only happen “when allies agree and conditions are met.”

Hungary and Slovakia have already said they will not agree under any circumstances, as bringing Ukraine into NATO would mean war with Russia.

During the same speech in Kyiv, Blinken painted a rosy picture of Ukraine’s military industry, claiming it had expanded six-fold over the last year.

               “In the coming years, that’s going to give Ukraine one of the most advanced defense industries in the world, and it will be able to take that to the global market and take global market share away from other countries like Russia and also supply NATO allies,” he added.

Kyiv depends entirely on the West for weapons, equipment, ammunition, and cash infusions to keep its government going. Ukraine also faces widespread electricity shortages, as Russian missile strikes have degraded power production capacity. On Wednesday, Blinken announced that the US will send $325 million to help repair the Ukrainian power grid and provide emergency backup generators for critical infrastructure.

Another $290 million has been earmarked for “food, water, shelter, health care, and education programs for Ukrainians” both in the country and abroad, with the remaining $102 million designated for landmine removal.

               “The bottom line is this: We want Ukraine to win,” Blinken declared at another point during his visit, according to AP.

Western officials have also stated this as a prerequisite for Kyiv’s membership in NATO. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in June that this effectively means that Ukraine will never join the bloc.

NATO’s 2008 announcement about Ukraine’s possible membership

“became the trigger for much of the entire crisis that we are observing today,” Ryabkov said at the time. “If NATO members are ready to fall into the same trap again and history teaches them nothing, then they will get hit again, and their bruises will get worse,” he added.

WHEN JEWS PRAISED MUSSOLINI AND SUPPORTED NAZIS: MEET ISRAEL'S FIRST FASCISTS

Some worrying components of Hebrew fascism are still evident in Israel's right-wing, 80 years on

Members of the Brit Habiryonim Revisionist underground. It aimed to get the country’s youth to see the light of nationalism. Credit: Jabotinsky Institute

By Dan Tamir
Haaretz Israel
20 July 2019

“Fascism is not a product for export.”
– Benito Mussolini, 1925

A mixture of repulsion and weird fascination was the reaction of many to the advertisement in the last election campaign in which Israel’s minister of justice modeled a vial of fictional perfume that bore an ideological label. It was a nifty idea, and the message was unmistakable: What her adversaries were smelling was not "fascism" but proper administration and a solid government. The clip did not salvage Ayelet Shaked’s campaign: Her party, Hayamin Hehadash, did not cross the electoral threshold this past April. However, the ad raised several questions of both historical and contemporary interest: What is the “smell” of fascism? Can it be “smelled” at all? Has there ever been fascism in Israel, and if so, is it on its way back?

Among the communist left, there is a common tendency to see fascism within every manifestation of nationalism or at least to see fascism as an extreme form of modern capitalism. In right-wing circles, in contrast, “fascism” is a curse to be evaded, a kind of persistent suspicion that must be rebuffed—as exemplified by the much-discussed perfume clip.

But what is fascism? What sets it apart from other right-wing political streams? In 2004, Robert Paxton, in his book “The Anatomy of Fascism” (disclosure: this writer translated that book into Hebrew), listed seven features that collectively might delineate the nature of fascism as an ideology and as a political practice. They are certainty in the supremacy of the group – national, ethnic – over every right of the individual, and the individual’s subordination to the group; belief that the group in question is a victim of other groups, as a consequence of which there is justification for every action taken against its enemies (domestic or external, real or imagined); fear of harm befalling the group from liberal tendencies or “foreign” influences from outside; the need for closer integration of a “purer” national community, whether by agreement or through violence; insistence on the group’s right to rule others without any limitations – a right accruing to the group by dint of its singularity or skills; a sense of the existence of a severe crisis, not amenable to any traditional solution; belief in the need for the authority of a lone and solitary leader, and obedience to that leader based on the conviction that he possesses supernatural insights or capabilities.

Some would add another trait is fierce opposition to socialism in all its forms. This characteristic was especially apparent in the practice of fascist movements active in the second half of the 20th century, even if not in their declared ideology.

The phenomena most typically identified as fascist are associated with the regimes that Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler headed: squadrismos (gangs in Italy) or Nazi stormtroopers rampaging in black or brown shirts, mass processions, subordination of the independent media to the regime, the effective elimination of the legislature, the reorganization of the entire economy in ostensible “harmony,” persecution of real or imagined domestic enemies, detention camps, mass executions, mobilization of the whole nation, and finally an external war that leads to utter destruction – in the case of Italy and Germany.

Benito Mussolini (second from left) and other fascist leaders, in the March on Rome, October 28, 1922, which led to their bloodless ascent to power. Credit: Roger-Viollet / © LAPI / AFP

Indeed, Mussolini’s Fascist Party and Hitler’s National-Socialist Party were the only two fascist organizations that were, for their part, successful in consolidating themselves, establishing a significant public of supporters and political might, achieving power, forming a new regime, and finally in leading their countries – whose apparatuses they undermined and which they damaged from within – into a horrific war. (Italy and Germany were the only countries in which such movements achieved power independently: The puppet regimes the occupiers set up in Europe survived only thanks to the bayonets of the Italian and German armed forces and collapsed immediately upon their eviction.) 

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However, in the period following World War I, many other groups and movements were active (mainly in Europe, though elsewhere as well) that were created and operated according to the fascist model – groups that sought to respond to like needs and to apply similar models in their policy. The Rexists in Belgium under Leon Degrelle, Vidkun Quisling’s National Rally in Norway, the Hungarian Iron Cross, Corneliu Codreanu’s Legion of the Archangel Michael in Romania, the Falange of José Antonio Primo de Rivera in Spain, the British Union of Fascists established by Oswald Mosley, and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party founded by Antoun Saadeh in Lebanon – these are only a few examples of movements that not only operated in the style and with the methods of Mussolini and Hitler, but also sought to establish similar regimes in their countries.

Each of the movements mentioned above bore distinctive characteristics, and each pursued a slightly different political strategy based on the political climate, the structure of the regime, and the social codes amid which it acted; none succeeded like their later counterparts in Italy and Germany. Nevertheless, all shared the characteristics of what scholars term “generic fascism.” In fact, in the 1920s and 1930s, fascism was a political phenomenon that cropped up and operated in almost every modern mass society that was afflicted by a deep crisis at the time.

And what about Palestine?

Compared to the protracted horror of the Western Front in World War I or to the battles saturated with the blood of myriads in Eastern Europe both in that war and during the emergence of the Soviet Union immediately afterward, the outer reaches of the Ottoman Empire were relatively quiet. However, the trepidation stemming from World War I – including the dissolution of the old political order and the economic and social dislocations that followed in its wake – did not wholly spare Palestine of that period. It ranged from mass mobilization, confiscation of property, and the exile of whole populations to deprivation and hunger, with the addition of extensive killing and murderous actions, and culminating in the total collapse of a generations-old political order, which was supplanted by a new imperial British administration that preserved certain features of the old order but also precipitated processes of modernization that affected the society, the economy, and politics.

The local changes in Palestine were overlaid by significant waves of immigration, including immigrants from Europe who arrived in the Yishuv, the pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine. Like every immigrant community, these Europeans came equipped with cultural baggage and political ideas that had been prevalent in their countries of origin. The communications system, which was improved and speeded up at the time (telephone, telegraph, newspapers), together with the diplomatic ties between Europe and Palestine and the relative freedom of movement between the two regions – all this enabled and even encouraged a flow of ideas between the eastern and northern coasts of the Mediterranean. Furthermore, a not-insignificant number of the European migrants who arrived in Palestine from the Continent’s center and east in the 1920s were “graduates” of World War I and the subsequent upheavals. Whether newly discharged from the German, Austro-Hungarian, or Russian armies or whether they were younger siblings of people who had served, like those of their generation who remained in Europe, they were members of the generation that the Great War scarred.

The juxtaposition of a faltering economy, a mass society possessing a modern political-party structure (as was the case in the Yishuv), two national communities competing with each other, disappointment at what seemed to be the inefficacy of the existing political establishment, and limited belief in the ability of the British-Mandatory authorities to provide protection and support for the populace sparked a search for new political answers. As in Europe, some found it in fascism; a fascist group gradually took shape in the Revisionist Zionist group.

The beginning was modest. Like many others in the mid-1920s, Itamar Ben-Avi, the son of Eliezer Ben Yehuda – the reviver of the Hebrew language and the editor of the newspaper Doar Hayom – expressed a liking and even admiration for Mussolini and his actions. Unlike other journalists at the time, he longed for a strong, assertive leader in the Yishuv and found him in the person of Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Another such person – a novice commentator who began his political and journalistic career in socialist circles and at the newspaper of the left-wing Hapoel Hatza’ir organization, and who was by late 1920s writing a regular column for Doar Hayom, titled “From the Notebook of a Fascist” – was Abba Ahimeir. Together with an intellectual who was disappointed in socialist circles, a writer and poet named Uri Zvi Greenberg, and the physician and essayist Joshua Heschel Yevin, Ahimeir established a group of young people called Brit Habiryonim (The Zealots’ Alliance), whose aim was to get the country’s youth to see the light about nationalism.

Itamar Ben-Avi. Credit: The Zionist Archives

The ideas espoused by the trio, leaders of the maximalist faction in the Revisionist movement, were given expression in the press. After a period in the late 1920s when they managed and effectively edited Doar Hayom, 1930 they founded Ha’am (which became Hazit Ha’am – The People’s Front – the following year). The worldview of this triumvirate entailed constantly treading on the brink of crisis and concern about an ongoing threat to the Yishuv and the Zionist enterprise. They saw the Jews as a whole and the Zionists in particular as historical victims in Europe and also in the Land of Israel. In their perception, their movement arose from “the silence-stricken battlefields” of World War I, in Yeivin’s words. Accordingly, they had only contempt for liberals, moderates, and whoever harbored notions of reaching compromises with either the Arabs or the British.

Their glorification of political violence – primarily as used against socialists and communists, but also against liberals and opponents in general – dovetailed nicely with their fondness for extreme-right circles in Europe. They made no secret of their aspiration for a single, adored leader: In a meeting of the Revisionist movement in Vienna in the summer of 1932, another member of the group, Wolfgang von Weisl, proposed that Jabotinsky be declared the movement’s supreme leader and vested with unlimited authority (Jabotinsky rejected the idea).

Brit Habiryonim fell apart at the end of 1933 when Ahimeir and two other Revisionist activists (Zvi Rosenblatt and Avraham Stavsky) were accused of assassinating Chaim Arlosoroff, a labor-Zionist leader, in June of that year. Ahimeir was acquitted of the murder charge but was convicted of heading an illegal organization and sentenced to two years in prison. Doar Hayom was also shut down and ceased publication.

Axis ties

Brit Habiryonim was active for only a short time. Still, its partial support for Hitlerite politics in Germany in the spring of 1933 (as expressed in the newspaper Hazit Ha’am, which infuriated Jabotinsky) was of even shorter duration; a few members of the movement even carried out a protest against the Nazi government and stole the swastika-bearing flag from the German consulate in Tel Aviv. In contrast, the Revisionist movement’s ties with Mussolini’s regime lasted until at least 1938, when Italy enacted race laws resembling those promulgated by the Nazis. Along with cadets of the Revisionist movement’s naval school, which operated from 1935 to 1937 in Civitavecchia under the auspices of the Italian fascist regime, additional young Revisionists were students in Italian universities.

Uri Zvi Greenberg. Disappointed in socialist circles. Credit: Zoltan Kluger/GPO

One such student was Zvi Kolitz, who, upon returning to Palestine after his studies, published a book, “Mussolini: His Personality and Doctrine.” The flattering biography of Il Duce also included a selection of his letters. (Kolitz’s residence in Italy and his affection for its leader did not prevent him from subsequently enlisting in the British Army.)

Another University of Florence graduate of that decade was Avraham Stern. Following his return to Palestine, he rose through the ranks of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (the Revisionists’ National Military Organization). Still, after World War II broke out, he left the Irgun and established a separate group called the Lehi (an acronym for “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”)—also known as the Stern Gang.

Ideologically, Stern envisaged in his writings and his manifesto “Principles of Birth” a national resurgence that corresponded closely with the fascist models of the period (even if in a very romanticized version). In the practical sphere, Stern sought cooperation with the Axis forces in the struggle against the British Mandate. In January 1941, following a failed attempt to contact the Italian representation in Palestine, Stern sent one of his people to approach the German representative in Beirut. That effort also came to nothing (mainly due to cost-benefit calculations of the German Foreign Ministry) but did prompt the British to step up their hunt for Stern and his organization's members.

Were the ties between the Revisionist movement and the fascist regimes based on deep, authentic affinity or only on shared interests in the struggle against Britain’s rule in the Mediterranean? In the case of Jabotinsky, who was far from a socialist but espoused the importance and application of liberal democratic values, it can be assumed that it was a temporary nexus of interests. But to judge by the speeches, articles, songs, and motions for the agenda of the members of the circle advocating a maximalist approach in Palestine, and afterward of the Irgun, its members viewed fascism as a worthy and even desirable path to follow.

Hebrew fascism in the era died out in 1942 between Florentin and El-Alamein. In February of that year, in a small apartment in the Florentin neighborhood of south Tel Aviv, Stern was apprehended and murdered on the spot by the British police; in November, the Axis forces were defeated in North Africa. Even if this was not the beginning of the end, as Winston Churchill maintained, it was the end of the beginning: The ascendancy of fascism on the world stage was curbed, its prestige faded, and its aura was significantly dimmed. For decades after 1945, fascism was considered opprobrious, unfit for a decent society – not a captivating perfume but a bad smell to be gotten rid of.

Fascist remnants

Eighty years later, what remains of Hebrew fascism in present-day Israeli politics? A number of the attributes of fascism noted above are discernible in the rhetoric of today’s right wing. Many Israelis believe in the supremacy of the nation's needs over every right of the individual and in the individual’s subordination to the country, from worshipping the totem of military service and the rabbinical establishment’s responsibility for dealing with marital matters to contempt for those who choose to emigrate. Similarly, it is not difficult to detect the unwavering belief that “the Jews” are victims of other groups, from the instrumental use of the murder of millions in Europe in World War II to the “few vs. many” paradigm here in Israel (with respect, for instance, to the wars it's fought over the years and the two intifadas) – if to note only two widespread excuses made for the State of Israel’s excessive use of military force.

Fear that the “nation’s values” will be eroded by universal liberal tenets or by “foreign” influences is also part and parcel of the approach of many on the Israeli right, whether in the passive form of apprehension of groups like the New Israel Fund, “foreign governments” and “international organizations,” or actively, in projects to “strengthen Jewish identity” among the population.

The belief in the need for the creation of a “purer” community is also very familiar: from the thugs of the anti-assimilationist Lehava organization and open hostility toward asylum seekers to the branding of the “leftist” not as a political rival, but as an alien element to be uprooted. And finally, the belief in the right of the Chosen People to rule others indefinitely has been evident every day for more than half a century in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

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Dr. Dan Tamir is the author of “Hebrew Fascism in Palestine, 1922-1942” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

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Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Photo Credit: Abraham A. van Kempen, our home away from home on the Dead Sea

By Abraham A. van Kempen
Senior Editor
Updated 19 January 2024

Those who commit to 'healing our broken humanity' build intercultural bridges to learn to know and understand one another and others. Readers who thumb through the Building the Bridge (BTB) pages are not mindless sheep following other mindless sheep. They THINK. They want to be at the forefront of making a difference. They're in search of the bigger picture to expand their horizons. They don't need BTB or anyone else to confirm their biases.

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

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